1. Field of the Present System
The present system is directed to methods for annotating shared contacts within a social network with public tags and/or notes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Social networking via the Internet is emerging as a popular method of expanding and developing social and business relationships. A social network has been defined as a map of the relationships between individuals, showing how they are connected through various social ties ranging from casual acquaintance to close bonds. The term social network has also been used to refer to the network infrastructure for bringing people together and simplifying the way in which relationships may be mapped and developed. The idea behind social networking is that people can leverage their friends and acquaintances to meet other people of interest.
Social networks have been known in one form or another for thousands of years. However, with advent and proliferation of the Internet, large enterprise service providers, such as MSN®, Yahoo® and AOL® service providers, allow individuals access to a tremendous network of contacts, organized in a coherent structure and easily accessible with a network connection. Aside from size, organization and ease of access, another benefit to Internet social networks is the trust and reliability of the people within one's network. Even if a person does not know a friend of a friend, there is at least an inference of trust and reliability in that the first person can assume that his or her friend would not associate with a friend who was not reliable or trustworthy. At least, the immediate friend can be trusted to offer an honest assessment of the trustworthiness of the third party. Social networks are also often relied upon for opinion based information such as for example, movies, restaurants, travel locations and the like.
Despite all of these advantages, Internet social networks may fall victim to their own success. One's social network may easily become so large that there is no meaningful way to filter the network to identify useful potential contacts. At present, there are no satisfactorily structured methods to describe and filter the myriad relationships that may exist on one's social network.